Outer Beltway: $2.25 estimated cost to drive from I-10 to Blanding

Long wait times are not anticipated.

Joseph Long points out a detail on the proposed First Coast Outer Beltway to Ed Myers. Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll was on hand Wednesday to announce the first 15-mile section of the project. Beltway tolls are expected to be 15 cents a mile.

Carroll and other state officials struggled to explain why the road was being tolled after Duval County voters chose to do away with all tolls in the late 1980s, agreeing to a half-cent sales tax instead.

"This is different," Carroll said. "Before, you had no choice to pay a toll going over the Fuller Warren Bridge."

Now residents will have a choice because many other roads will remain free, she said. Free roads would include Interstate 295, U.S. 301, Normandy Boulevard and 103rd Street.

State Transportation Secretary Ananth Prasad said the new road would be used, even if residents today don't think they'll pay a toll.

People use the Florida Turnpike even though free roads exist, because the turnpike can be more convenient. The same thing will be true of the Outer Beltway, Prasad said.

Alan Mosley, head of the Florida Department of Transportation in Northeast Florida, said the concern about tolls coming back is more about inconvenience than money.

"I think a lot of the anguish people previously had about tolls was related to having to wait at toll booths," he said. "That won't be happening with this road."

Tolls will be collected using a fully automated system called SunPass, which has become ubiquitous in areas like Interstate 95 in Miami and on the Florida Turnpike.

SunPass does not have toll booths; it allows traffic to move at full speed through a toll area that automatically deducts tolls from a credit card account via a transponder that has been attached to the front windshield of someone's car.

If someone doesn't have a transponder in their car, the license plate is photographed and a bill is sent to the owner of the car.

The toll road will be built in two portions.

Construction from I-10 to Argyle Forest Boulevard will begin in fall 2012 and Argyle to Blanding will begin in 2013.

Traffic from I-10 will not be tolled until after New World Avenue. This allows people to travel to and from the Cecil Commerce Center without having to pay a toll.

State officials said they expected about 20,000 motorists to use the road on an average day after it was tolled. That is roughly the number of people who use the road now.

While state officials argued that residents would be free to avoid the road if they chose, Clay County resident Curt Kinder was not convinced.

Kinder said there were no good free roads around the Middleburg area.

"I worry that you're going to have people clogging up all these two-lane roads that are the only way to avoid using the toll road," Kinder said.

The state still has to figure out a way to extend the road down to I-95 in St. Johns County. Until earlier this year, the state's plan had been to hire a private partner that would build the entire 46.5-mile roadway and then maintain it and charge the tolls.

A new bridge will also be built over the St. Johns River in Clay County, replacing the Shands Bridge.

Carroll said the state still plans to hire a private company to build and toll the area south of Blanding. But Prasad said the existing roadway had to be done first.

"Once this becomes a success and the economy comes back," Prasad said, "I think we'll have a lot of options on how we can move forward."

Carroll has commited political suicide as far as my vote is concerned. Vote them all out of office. Next thing you will have a toll booth at the end of your driveway and cost you 15 cents to drive out of your driveway onto a city or state road. What in the heck did the politicians do with the triple cost of renewing your drivers license? What did they do with the double cost of renewing your car tags? What did they do with all the other tax increases that we have been hit with? Social security people get no pay raise because the cost of living has not gone up yet congress gets a automatic pay raise every year because they voted for it to be automatic so they would not be quite so embarrassed and still this year they voted themselves a pay raise on top of their automatic pay raise. If they think that people in foreign country are the only ones that are fed up they are wrong. VOTE THEM ALL OUT. Brannen field road is just a testing site to see how upset the public gets. once it is in place the roads all over Jacksonville will be toll roads ever 1 mile. But you can bet the politicians will have a micro chip to run the toll booths.

Wait until, due to a computer glitch or a crooked employee, your account gets debited for a thousand bucks. Or 200 people's accounts get debited for 20 bucks each. Fun times ahead for those who choose to pay the trolls.